Opinion Blog

Can we have our guns and ban them too?

I will be the first to admit that holding a gun is a sexy feeling. Shooting one and hitting a target is exhilarating. At a training range in Afghanistan long ago, a U.S. Special Forces member gave me the option of firing either an M-4 or an AK-47. I selected the AK-47. He showed me how to click it from the safety position to fully automatic, assuming that I wanted to let out a mighty spray of bullets. I clicked the selector back to semi-automatic, got into firing position and took one shot. I hit the target, more than 100 yards away, on the first try. I returned it to the safety position, then handed it back to him. Fun as it was, that was enough for me.

My longstanding credo in war zones was never to carry a weapon, regardless of the danger. I made this one exception because we were far away from Afghan civilians, and I was relatively sure that my position as an observer wouldn’t be compromised by having fired a weapon far away from the combat zone. But man, that sure was exciting.

So I understand when gun advocates get angry about the idea of banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. But I’m like retired Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal in believing that these weapons were designed for military use in combat situations and that they have no reasonable application to civilian life whatsoever. They are not hunting rifles. Their ammunition travels at 3,000 feet per second. Those bullets are designed to rip apart flesh, explode heads and kill human beings.

The ammunition, the weapons and the magazines need to be banned from civilian ownership and use.

I have never heard anyone produce a convincing argument that assault weapons and high capacity magazines have a reasonable application in civilian life. The only argument even worth considering, in my book, is that, yes, they’re dangerous as hell, but they are really fun to shoot. At least the people who make this argument are being honest. The most bogus argument out there is from those who argue that it’s our Second Amendment right to own assault weapons. There is no such constitutional right. Period. Nor is there a right to own an M1-A1 Abrams tank (which I’ve also had a lot of fun riding in) or a Sidewinder missile. There is no constitutional right to access dangerous devices or blow things up even it’s fun.

But is there a middle ground? Would it be possible to ban unlicensed, private possession but allow tightly regulated ownership of assault weapons among government-licensed, registered firing-range owners? Such firing ranges could be required to submit to rigorous federal inspection to ensure that the arms are kept locked up when not in use and cannot be removed from the site. Let people shoot away and have their fun — responsibly. And let the rest of us live a little more securely in the belief that fewer crazy people will have access to devices specifically designed to kill people — en masse if need be.

Yes, I’ve heard the argument that swimming pools kill more people than assault rifles. So are we going to ban swimming pools or start licensing them? Well, if people start carrying swimming pools into elementary schools and movie theaters and using them to kill large groups of people at a time, then maybe we should. But so far, that hasn’t happened, nor will it. However, all other devices capable of killing people in mass quantities are regulated in some way to severely restrict civilian access to them: chemicals, biological agents, passenger airplanes. Rapid-fire assault weapons with high capacity magazines deserve to be on that list, too.

Nobody is trying to take your pistols and hunting rifles away from you. That’s not the issue here. Americans will still be free to kill each other with such weapons at a rate that puts the Iraqis, Syrians, Afghans and Mexican drug lords to shame. But, given the bloody history of the past year, anyone who thinks assault weapons and high capacity magazines don’t at least belong on the table for discussion is not someone who even belongs in the discussion in the first place.

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The Dallas Morning News Editorial Board was the first editorial board in the nation to use a blog to openly discuss hot topics and issues among its members and with readers. Our intent is to pull back the curtain on the daily process of producing the unsigned editorials that reflect the opinion of the newspaper, and to share analysis and opinion on issues of interest to board members and invited guest bloggers.